Effectively assisting people doing good to do it even better

Preaching To The Converted

The converted. Let’s define them those who have helped to improve some feature of their work area, and who are now trying to make sure the improvements are sustained.

Against the sometimes ambiguous results of change programs the converted may be an endangered species – certainly rare. If they are not nurtured, supported and encouraged their involvement may weaken. Commitment to reform deteriorates.

And yet “preaching to the converted” has somehow come to mean “stay away from the converted – leave them to it”. While preaching and lecturing have no constructive place in creating and maintaining behaviour change neither does ignoring success.

So – how do you treat your converted – those who are hard at work trying to sustain the improvements they have achieved? After making successful changes we do need to work hard to sustain them, so let’s not leave success to chance.

Here are three ideas to consider for helping a work group keep up the changes they have made:

1. Stress at work increases the risk of abandoning the changes – so why not help those working at sustaining change to anticipate and better deal with stress.
2. Encourage those working at maintaining improvements to take credit for what they have achieved.
3. Hold “lessons learnt” sessions – simply have the team identify what worked well and what didn’t work so well and focus on how to have more things go well.

By Joe Moore. Joe is the founder and principal of Kimber Moore Associates. He and his team are highly skilled in helping leaders and staff deal with uncertainty, change, complexity and conflicts. You can contact Joe here